THE ARTIST IN ME CRIES OUT FOR DESIGN

13 November 2006

Ronald Kapaz

Ronald Kapaz

TopTalent Brand Identity (c) 2001 Foco Human Resources, designed
by Ronald Kapaz, Oz Design. Brand Identity for a .com service in the
area of human resources and headhunting. As the service is geared for
recently graduated professionals, the idea was to picture them as
powerful persons, first, to encourage their hiring, and second, to give
young professionals the energy and self-confidence they need in the
beginning of their careers.

"The artist in me cries out for design" Robert Frost (1874-1963), "A Masque of Reason."

What
is the essence of a Designer? Why is Design the focus of attention at
the leading commercial strategy study centers? Why is aesthetics
replacing concepts like reengineering or downsizing as a strategic
factor in the lexicon of 'businessmen'?

To answer these
questions we must first address, from a historian's perspective, what
we, urban men, have produced in the past century, and how this may help
us view the new century's challenges.

Two industrial
revolutions helped us solve two great challenges of the 20th Century:
we needed industrial scale production of goods to meet the demands of a
growing urban population, and we needed to produce these goods with
technological competence - they had to 'work'.

Simultaneously
with and directly related to these two challenges, we lived under an
illuministic spell, the fruit of the growing scientific competence that
we developed and that bore us to an age of 'elegy of reason'. We were
charmed by our ability to explain the world in scientific terms and
rule it as a result. But our focus on mastering the outside world, made
us forget to pay attention to the inner world, to spirit, to our
psychic dimension, to our emotions.

The outcome can be seen in the 'market'.

We
live in a technologically bountiful age, earned through the competent
use of our rational abilities, of the left side of our brains. At the
same time, we produce huge numbers of technologically 'similar' goods,
with little symbolic relevance and meaning.

As social
animals, we should bear in mind that every gesture or product of ours
aims at dialogue, at the exchange of views, and at the construction of
the self, of subjectivity. We are in constant pursuit of our peers,
even as we strive to be different inasmuch as we wish our peers to
acknowledge us as unique and special.

This basic drive
towards the pursuit of affection and attention, a psychological
motivation, can be understood as a hunger of the spirit, as vital to
us, humans, as the hunger of the body, the primitive drive of all
living creatures.

It is the quenching of both that
leads to subjective happiness (to use a term coined by my friend
Eduardo Gianetti, economist and philosopher).

Watching
a dance performance, contemplating a sunset, or enjoying Shakespeare
are pleasures that feed the soul, as they connect us with our peers and
foster our growth as a culture. They are 'calisthenics' for the right
side of the brain, which we must resume lest we become the machines we
have built to wait on us.

Adauto Novaes, in his book
'The Machine-Man', warns: "the action most celebrated by the modern
world is, first and foremost, the manufacturing of things or objects,
not relationships among humans." And continues: "For the Greeks, the
term praxis (practice) meant reciprocal action among humans."

And
where does design enter the stage? Knowing that every act of production
or consumption carried out by man is meant to sate two hungers - that
of the body and that of the spirit, or psyche - we become aware that we
have successfully dealt with the former, through our technological
competence, and now face the challenge of (re)incorporating to our
goods, which already function appropriately, the expressive and
symbolic dimension that will feed our souls.

Expression
implies having something to express, communicating relational, ethical,
social, psychological, behavioral, human values that are relevant to a
given audience, to a given 'tribe'.

Take the example of
Nike, which is one of today's major brands, but does not own a single
shoe factory anywhere in the world. What is Nike's product, really?
What does Nike 'sell'? They sell competitiveness, daring, youthfulness,
modernity, a set of human values that, in order to be expressed and
become tangible, are presented - designed - as sporting footwear. A set
of human qualities which, incorporated to the functional dimension of
the object, turn a product into the brand of a tribe and a generation.

This
illustrates our current quest of understanding the subjective dimension
of well-being, understanding the sociological and expressive dimension
of our human condition, and incorporating this dimension, the dimension
of culture, into what we produce to achieve happiness.

In
a globalised scenario, the importance of the pursuit of cultural
identity, expressed as the ability to transmit local values and our
peculiar outlook on the world to our products, gains weight.

This
is what the world now exchanges within the context of foreign trade.
Therefore, the cultural domain plays a strategic, vital role as a
source of national reflection on values, their production, and their
contribution to the construction of a strong, relevant, unique and
Brazilian national identity.

What I perceive and cheers
me is the birth of a much-welcome neo-humanism. To design is to shape
our spirit, so that we can express and share our world vision.
Aesthetics is the visible face of spirit.

Therefore,
design now moves towards its real condition as a cultural and strategic
actor, evolving from a mere exercise of form into an important
instrument for the expression and translation of relevant concepts and
values capable of enabling 'exchange among humans'.

We
may have to rethink the 'time is money' motto, the fruit of a
Protestant, materialistic world vision, to reclaim subtlety and
delicacy and remember that, as Mies van der Rohe put it, 'God lives in
the detail'.

About Ronald Kapaz
Ronald Kapaz is Head Designer, Founder and one of the three Partners of Oz Design, a 25-year-old design company located in Sao Paulo, Brazil.
Oz Design has been nominated for two consecutive years for best
Brazilian Design Firm, in a survey held among leading designers of
Brazil. Ronald is member of the Council for Ethics of ADG - Brazil.